Saturday, 19 March 2016

Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse is the ninth-brightest star in the night sky and second-brightest in the constellation Orion. The distance to us is estimated at 640 lightyears. It is a first magnitude star and with the bare eye you can see it is reddish. The star's name is derived from the Arabic Ibt al-Jauza, meaning "the hand of Orion". I managed to make a photo of Betelgeuse ("Betelgeuze" in Dutch) early this month with my Canon1000D. An exposure time of 12 seconds was good enough to capture the red supergiant (30 times the mass of the sun).

It is funny to realize that the light that Betelgeuse emitted in the year 1376 arrived in 2016 on earth. In 1376, Yusuf III, Sultan of Granada was born.

January 2013 I made this photo of Orion. Brightest star Rigel is found in the right hand lower corner.